


Loss

by Arwriter



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Basically just Arthur's thoughts, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Whump, Father-Son Relationship, Funerals, Funerals are weird y'all, Mentions of Death, Sad, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:19:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwriter/pseuds/Arwriter
Summary: After suffering a loss, Arthur watches and reflects on how the world reacts to death.





	Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter of Withered Lungs is coming soon, but I went to a funeral this weekend and I was inspired to write something small

Of all the things humans collectively accepted, of all the rituals and shared experiences normalized by society, funerals had to be one of the strangest things Arthur has ever seen. 

He’s seen his fair share of course, but death seems to hit harder recently, become something more real, more imminent. 

Davey, Mac, Jenny...and now Sean, too. 

One moment he’d been his usual self, loud and brash, too cocky for his own good, and in the blink of an eye, with a single gunshot, the light had been torn from his eyes, face decorated with crimson, and he’d never spoken again. 

Just like that. A life, so important to so many, had been ended with such ease it almost felt like a dream, like a dark, traitorous thought too impossible to be real.  

He’s survived so much, all of them have, Arthur never really thought about how easy death could come. All those people he’s killed, the nameless faces swarming together, all of them meant something to someone. All of their deaths had an impact on someone. And he’d taken their lives away, just like that, never giving it a second thought.

He shouldn’t be watching this, he knows he shouldn’t. Funerals are private, reserved for grieving families and friends, a last moment to say goodbye. 

But Arthur can’t bring himself to look away, leaned against the fence outside the church, close enough to listen and watch without being immediately spotted. 

And he’s never quite realized just how appalling funerals are. 

There’s a coffin of dark, polished wood, sealed shut and placed in front of a six-foot hole, ready to be lowered. There’s a group of people, all dressed in black, the dead man’s friends and family, standing around the open grave. 

They’re talking, casual and soft, catching up as if it’s any other regular day. As if there isn’t a dead body inches away from where they stand.

It’s ridiculous, Arthur decides, that  _ this _ is what happens when someone dies. That when a loved one is lost, a lifeless corpse is shoved in a box and left underground to rot while the people who once loved them watch in silence. 

A preacher is speaking of life now sealed away in that box, the life he never knew, of a man he never met, while the dead man’s family listens in silence, forced conversation coming to an end. 

He speaks of god, of the newly created spirit’s guide, of an afterlife and hope for closure and acceptance for those left behind. 

They speak of him from an outsider's perspective, nothing real coming from the preacher’s mouth. He didn’t know the man who died, and those who did are rendered to unnatural silence as they watch the ceremony. 

The family, stricken with grief and shock at losing a loved one so suddenly, are forced to calm normalcy. Because that’s what’s expected. Funerals aren’t a place of grief, they’re only a romanticized way of getting rid of a body. 

There are thousands of other funerals happening, hundreds probably in this town alone, everybody reaching the end of their story at some point. It isn’t special, it isn’t a private, spiritual ceremony reserved for one mourning family at a time. It’s just part of everyone’s world. 

Arthur wonders if this is what will happen to him. If after everything, this is what he’ll leave behind. A rotting corpse in a box, the people he once loved standing over a hole and pretending to be ok. Talking about him like they barely knew him. The air tense and the conversation fake. 

He wonders if it will happen to Sean. Bill will have brought his body back to camp by now, the girls probably already working on carving a tombstone. 

Karen won’t be the same, stricken with fury and grief. Grief she’ll never truly be able to work through, not with the way their lives are. There simply isn’t time to mourn, to take the time needed to recover. 

Arthur supposes it's like that for everyone. Too many expectations, too many responsibilities. Nobody gets the time they need. Nobody gets the chance to say goodbye. 

Hosea would probably say differently. He’d say funerals are a way to cope, for people with faith to connect with their god, to find the strength they need to keep living. He’d say its the only way people truly get to say their farewells. 

Arthur can’t help but disagree. Funerals don’t help. They don’t ease the pain, they only create the illusion of comfort. Funerals aren’t a place of grief or sorrow, they’re places of false serenity. A place to pretend. 

They aren’t for the living, and they certainly aren’t for the dead. But they’re necessary, because for most, a grave is the only thing left behind. 

But Mac didn’t get a grave. They didn’t get a chance to retrieve Jenny’s body, though Arthur doubts she received a proper burial. 

But in the end, Arthur wasn’t sure it mattered. So what if they didn’t get a chance to put a rotting corpse in the ground? Who cares where a lifeless body ends up? They both left something behind. They had their family, friends who were still breathing, memories to be cherished for a lifetime. 

And when they all passed, as they all inevitably would, so what if future generations didn’t know their name? Why would it matter if strangers saw words carved into stone, standing over a pile of worthless bones? 

Sean would have a grave, closure for some, but not nearly worth what people said it was. 

When Arthur died, would a grave be all he left behind? Would anybody even be left to bury him? The way things were going, the lives he’d worked tirelessly to protect would be gone long before him. What if he was the last to go? 

There would be nothing worth leaving behind if he outlived his family. Nobody would hold memories of him, nobody would have their lives to cherish. He would save no one, never worth anything to anybody. 

He’d just be another downed killer rotting in the open air, his long-dead corpse eventually dumped in a river or thrown in a ditch, left to be forgotten. 

But everyone was forgotten at some point. Nobody lives on forever.  And if they do, it’s never real. The memories never stay pure after years pass, becoming twisted stories and glorified reminiscings. 

“Sir?” 

The preacher is looking at him, glaring, like Arthur listening to a speech about a god that had no connection to the body in the box, or the man that had once inhabited it, was blasphemous. 

Because god didn’t give a shit about some small town farmer who had passed away. He didn’t care when he was alive, and it was no different now that he was dead. 

God wouldn’t care if he was rich, living in a city and making a difference in the world. God wouldn’t care if Arthur died. God hadn’t cared when Sean died. 

And yet people still kept their faith. Prayers unanswered day after day, lives lost in countless swarms. Reverend always told him to keep his faith in god, despite how brutal the world seemed. 

And Dutch always told him to have faith in him, in his plans, in his family. Arthur was finding it nearly impossible to do either. 

Maybe it was simply something wrong with him. Maybe he just couldn’t believe in anything. Maybe all he’d ever been able to see was the world for what it was. 

But it hasn't always been like this. He had hope once, they all had. But losing this much family in such a short time was a painful reminder to how fragile mortality really was. 

They would all die eventually, some just sooner than others. 

The preacher was still glaring at him, hands clasped behind his back, the mourning family watching him silently. “We’re in a place of grief.” 

Arthur nodded, pushing himself away from the fence, wincing at the twinge in his sore muscles. There was still blood under his nails from the shootout in Rhodes, blood of men taken from the world in the blink of an eye. 

“Sure,” he agreed, heart heavy as he turned away. “Sorry for your loss.” 

It felt stale on his tongue, useless and insincere. But it was expected of him, and the people gathered in the cemetery nodded, turning back to their words of false hope. 

Arthur mounted his horse, starting off in the direction of camp. He couldn’t afford to stay distracted. Not now. 

With the life they lived, people would die. It happened. More frequently as things worsened, but there was nothing to be done. He’d only follow suit if he kept wallowing in his grief. 

The sun was beginning to set, the looming forest turned dark and gray in the fading light, and Arthur started down the path, disappearing into the brush. 


End file.
